Finding the keys to success

John Hart built his reputation as a general manager with a run-scoring machine in Cleveland and has taken over another one in Texas. The Rangers have outscored all but four American League teams over the last three seasons.

Yet during that time they rank 10th in victories and are a combined 54 games below .500. Any analysis of the Rangers reminds Hart about baseball's cardinal axiom: It's the pitching, stupid.

"The trouble with that is you can't get the pitchers you really want," Hart said. "If I called Houston about Roy Oswalt or the White Sox about Mark Buehrle, their general managers would laugh at me."

Hart understands.

"When you get young starting pitchers who can dominate and who are going to be your property for a number of years, you're not going to trade them," he said. "Forget it. It doesn't happen."

There's no more valuable commodity in baseball than young, established starting pitchers. Though the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks essentially have purchased the starting pitchers who have brought them World Series trophies, few organizations have comparable resources.

"There's no question that young starting pitching is the starting point for putting together a team," said Houston Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker, a former college pitching coach.

"Starting pitchers are the cornerstones of any team. If you can develop those guys yourself, you have a chance to put a good team around them. If you don't develop those guys yourself, you are going to have a very difficult time putting together a team that can win. That's especially true if you have a budget to consider, and very few of us don't have to worry about a budget."

Both of Chicago's major-league teams have been successful stockpiling pitching in recent seasons. As a result, the Sox and Cubswho haven't had back-to-back winning records simultaneously since 1936-37are positioned for extended runs of strong seasons.

Kerry Wood's arrival as the 1998 National League rookie of the year began the latest movement. But it has taken only one year for 22-year-old wunderkind Mark Prior to surpass Wood in terms of long-term expectations.

"The question with Prior isn't whether he will win a Cy Young," one scout said. "The question is how many Cy Youngs will he win?"

While Wood and Prior created a national buzz, the Sox quietly have assembled the major leagues' deepest stable of starting pitchers who are 25 or younger. Buehrle, Jon Garland and Dan Wright have combined to win 80 games, and only Wright has turned 25. He celebrated that birthday in December.

Though Oakland's trio has had much more success, Zito didn't arrive in the big leagues until after Hudson's 25th birthday. The A's never counted heavily on a trio of starting pitchers as young as the Sox's current mix.

Buehrle, Garland and Wright aren't quite the second coming of the Young Guns. That tag fit the trio of Alex Fernandez, Wilson Alvarez and Jason Bere, who led the White Sox to an AL Central title in 1993 and appeared headed toward another before the strike of '94. It might not be too long until it also works for the current group.

Buehrle, Garland and Wright all won at least 12 games in 2002. In the last eight seasons, only one other team featured a trio of 24-or-younger pitchers who were double-figure winners. That was the 2001 Florida Marlins, who featured Ryan Dempster, A.J. Burnett and Brad Penny.

Buehrle, Garland and Wright are only the 15th trio of 24-and-unders to have double-figure victory totals since 1960. Their combined total of 45 victories in 2002 was topped by only three of those other trios.

Otherwise, Buehrle, Garland and Wright won as many games as any trio of pitchers their age since 1960. It hasn't gone unnoticed.

"They've very impressive," said Texas manager Buck Showalter. "I don't think they are a secret. But I'm also not sure that people have recognized just how good they might become. That's a very nice collection of arms to build around."

Buehrle, Garland and Wright aren't joined at the hip, but sometimes it seems that way. They shadowed each other around spring training, almost always doing their running and weight training at the same time. Garland and Buehrle, who are single, are roommates during spring training and on the road. Wright was in that group last spring, but he has gotten married.

"We all get along," Buehrle said. "I always try to get along with everyone, but it's easy with Jon and Danny. We can relate to each other, being young. We can talk to each other, and sometimes it's better than if it comes from anybody else."

Buehrle was 21 and barely a year out of Jefferson Junior College in Hillsboro, Mo., when he made his debut with the Sox on July 16, 2000. He had pitched with Wright at Burlington, Iowa, at the end of the 1999 season. He got to know Garland during the Sox's run to a Central Division title in 2000.

Garland, a first-round draft pick of the Cubs in 1997 who was traded to the Sox in '98, was only 20 when he pitched in his first game, beating Buehrle to the big leagues by about two weeks. They have shared clubhouse space with Wright since July 27, 2001, when he was promoted from Double-A Birmingham.

Buehrle, Wright and Garland combined to start 100 games last season. They are mindful that elsewhere they might be surrounded by veterans who might not welcome a talented kid taking someone's job.

"You still have to go out and do your job as best you can, but it might take a little off you," Garland said of the support they give each other. "Here, you're not that lone guy, so you don't get as much [pressure] as you might. You don't feel like all eyes are focused on you, which makes it a little easier."

In his 2½ seasons, Buehrle has become one of the biggest winners in Sox history. He was 19-12 last season and has a 39-21 record for his brief career. If he can maintain that pace until he reaches 50 victories, he'll supplant Lefty Williams as the holder of the best winning percentage (.650) in the organization's history.

Buehrle has four pitches he can throw for strikes. The brilliance of his approach is its simplicity.

Scout Nathan Durst said Buehrle has changed little since he was in junior college.

"He always has been a guy who gets the ball and throws it to the catcher's glove," Durst said. "I saw him after [he won 16 games in 2001] and asked how he had done it. He told me: 'It's the same old thing. I'm just throwing it to the glove."'

Sandy Alomar Jr. says he never had noticed Buehrle until the Sox sent him tapes of their pitchers after Alomar left Cleveland to join them before the 2001 season.

"I looked at all their pitchers and he jumped out," Alomar said. "I said, 'Who is this guy?' His pace of the game, the way he handled himself, was unbelievable. As soon as he gets the ball from the catcher, he's throwing it again. You barely have time to give him a sign, and he's not shaking you off. He gets on top of hitters in a hurry. I think that is so important."

Buehrle picked up a cut fastball in 2001 that has become an important pitch for him. He says he's messing around with a fifth pitch, a split-finger fastball, but doesn't expect to break it out in a game.

"I'm happy with the way things are going," Buehrle said. "I'm going to wait until there's a need to change something."

Buehrle, a quick study, already may have maximized his potential. But Sox pitching coach Don Cooper believes Garland and Wright have only scratched the surface of their potential.

"Obviously, Buehrle and [Bartolo] Colon have track records," Mientkiewicz said. "But the other guys they have are good too. They proved it in the second half [of 2002]. Garland has that hard sinker, and Wright has tremendous stuff. You don't know what you're going to get when you face him, but you know his stuff is going to be good."

Garland flashed front-of-the-rotation potential in 2000. Pitching when he was 20, he went 9-2 with a 2.26 earned-run average in 16 starts at Triple-A Charlotte, which is considered a difficult home base for pitchers.

In Garland's first 29 major-league starts, he was 8-14 with a 5.28 ERA, averaging only five innings a start. He improved to 12-12 with a 4.58 mark last season, working 1922/3 innings.

Alomar felt he was watching a young Kevin Brown when Garland got on a roll late last spring. He held Boston, the Yankees, Kansas City and Montreal to 16 hits and four runs in 281/3 innings over four starts between May 22 and June 8.

"He was locked in," Alomar said. "When he gets to a point where he has that feeling more often, he's going to be a really good pitcher."

Like Garland, Wright dominated at times in the minors. He compiled a 2.82 ERA in 20 starts with Birmingham in 2001, holding hitters to a .229 batting average and striking out 128 in 134 innings.

Wright's 5.31 career ERA in the big leagues has been a disappointment. Scouts say he has better pure stuff than Buehrle or Garland, but he hasn't been able to establish consistency.

"Danny's ball just moves all over the place," Alomar said. "Sometimes it moves too much and he gets himself in trouble. He has to make a lot of adjustments. When he does, he's locked in and, geez, he jams the heck out of guys. He just eats up right-handers."

Wright struggled with his health this spring. He missed about two weeks of work after experiencing tenderness in his elbow and has been placed on the 15-day disabled list. He'll be behind his fellow starters as the season begins, but he should catch up soon. He believes he's close to turning the corner.

"Basically you have to have some success before you feel confident, before you trust your stuff," Wright said. "I think that's going to be the case this year."

Like Garland, Wright finished strong in 2002. The two were a combined 7-3 with a 3.39 ERA last September. Both believe they benefited from Cooper's midseason promotion. He had been the organization's minor-league pitching coordinator before replacing Nardi Contreras as pitching coach.

"I think he knows us better than anybody else," Garland said. "He knows how we like to approach things because he has been with us from the first day in the minor leagues.

"It's an advantage for us, no doubt."

The Sox got 100 starts last season from pitchers who were 24 or younger, more than any team in the majors. The Cubs were eighth on that list with 51 and figure to have even more this season.

Prior and 21-year-old Venezuelan Carlos Zambrano will open the season in the rotation. Juan Cruz, who will pitch at 24 this season, or even 21-year-old Angel Guzman could grab a spot before the year is over. No wonder Wood feels like an old man at 25.

"There's no question that this team has a lot of pitching, young pitching," manager Dusty Baker said. "That was the first thing that appealed to me when I took this job. I've seen these guys from the other dugout, and they're the kind of pitchers you want on your side."

Baker knows he's going to have to take some lumps. But he believes he has the pitching to stay near the top for a long time once the winning begins.

"When you have pitching, you always have a chance," Baker said.

"And when you have young pitchers who know how to win, you have a chance not just to win something once but to keep it together for a long time. This is an exciting mix."